K-SCORE: 88
Writer / Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Philip Baker Hall, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Riley, Julianne Moore, Jeremy Blackman, Melinda Dilon, Luis Guzman, Alfred Molina, Ricky Jay, Michael Murphy, Melora Walters, Michael Brown, Filliam H. Muffman
Spoiler Level: Minor
I didn’t do this in 2007. If I did, maybe this is what I would have written:
It’s rare for a film to accomplish such tremendous complexity in such a short time. Auteur Paul Thomas Anderson does this with an ensemble drama that raises questions of relationships, of broken parents, of the process of dying, and of the significance of coincidence. It’s a film with enough characters and storylines that it’s inevitably not about any specific one, but about the small connections that bind them. Through this collection, Anderson makes us wonder about our own lives and the forces that drive us that are beyond our control.
I could go on. I could write about the complexity of individual storylines, about how the misogynistic Frank T.J. Mackey was more driven by his loving mother who died than his hateful father. I could write about how a trophy wife could come to really love her husband and then hate herself at the end of his life. I could write about the little boy who raps the future and the cop that can’t hear it. The addict that’s afraid to let her real self show, the whiz kid who doesn’t know what to do with all his knowledge in his old age, who is gay (field day!), or the frogs, an obvious and hyper religious metaphor, but a metaphor nonetheless. Honestly, nowadays when I watch Magnolia, I think about the friends and girlfriends I used to watch it with who are no longer in my life. And I think about all these actors. And how so many of them are fucking dead. Henry Gibson - dead. Jason Roberts - dead. Philip Baker Hall - dead. What? Philip Baker Hall’s not dead? Well, good for him. Philip Seymour Hoffman - dead Decent movie though.